The Wild West

The days seem to swirl by, catching me in their eddies. I grasp after the good hours to keep locked in memory, weaving them into this beautiful life.

Beaverhead Mountains, Idaho

We fly down the road through the once wild west, now just a hodgepodge of broken trailer homes and shiny tractors. The old wooden buildings scatter through fields and towns – gravestones to a more vibrant time.

A time when the west submitted to the wild grit of the pioneers. An untamed region – ruled in harmony by changing seasons, animals, and Indians – began to unravel, picked apart by greed and arrogance. An ancient culture cut down: they burned their sanctity with church, beat arrows with metal bullets, ruined grand warriors with mere blankets. A magnificent people yielded to the cruel settlers. Tepees burned and buffalo massacred, these tribes slowly bowed to the white man’s prison – forgotten on reservations, left to resurrect their souls.

The harsh men and women of the westward expansion turned into queens and kings, heroes of the frontier. But soon, the machine dethroned them. The world changed and so did the land. An exodus left ghost towns to echo with the lives their walls once held.

So the land reverberates with memories and ghosts as cows graze and tractors plow: the memories of a barbaric land in which wanderers danced over and brave settlers conquered. But, both the tribe and homesteads faded, now broken beyond repair by the past’s crimes.

The Grand Tetons, Yellowstone National Park

The land is no longer free – unmarked in its peaks and valleys, but the western air still hangs heavy with adventure if you know how to breathe. Even though roads hatch mark the earth as power lines attempt to lace it up, cracks and crevices of splendor fill this place.The land still echos with the courage of the past and holds onto the tragically brave wandering of those people. The west still remains wild in its bones.